One Summer, by David Baldacci

Baldacci, David, One Summer, 2011

Spoilers: Throughout

David Baldacci spoke at my town’s literary arts festival one year, and he was interesting and friendly. So I’m predisposed to like what he writes. I have read The Camel Club and Divine Justice—political thrillers that weave and dodge—and enjoyed them as much as any of that genre, certainly more than Tom Clancy books, for example. But One Summer is different. Baldacci is taking a detour into a more reflective type of fiction. One Summer is the story of loss and love and love and loss. It tells the story of Jack Armstrong, a man who cheats certain death while his wife cheats certain life. In a validation of the idea that god is a trickster, the wrong one dies. When Jack finally recovers (it’s a miracle), his family is gone: wife dead, children scattered to various relatives, house and belongings sold. The novel tells the story of Jack’s reclamation and the reclamation of his family.

This book is a good read and rings true. (Keep the Kleenex box handy.) But it doesn’t break any new ground. Jack learns that, hey, life goes on. Pain keeps coming, and so does joy. In the end, the book has almost a fairy-tale quality, wherein wrongs are righted, wounds are healed, and all is well. Love cures all. Well, as many of us know pretty intimately, sometimes wrongs are validated, injuries fester, and life is skewed, or modulated into a different key forever. Love is not always enough.

Supporting the idea that this is a miraculous book, miracles actually happen. The miracle-in-chief is Jack’s healing from certain death through the other-worldly intervention of his late wife’s spirit. The other bit of fantasticalness is when the short in the lighthouse wiring fortuitously reveals itself just in the nick of time. Just having a family from Cleveland inherit land on the South Carolina coast is a pretty big miracle in itself! South Carolina mystically provides all that the family needs.

When he is dying, Jack writes six letters to his wife to tell her the things he can’t say out loud. These letters are a major device in the book, symbolizing emotional growth/change. But the letters are pretty pedestrian, and even a little embarrassing.

I know I’m sounding a bit sarcastic here. If you really view this book as a fairy tale or, better yet, a fable, it is beautiful. I even toyed with the idea that it is Jack’s fantasy from his death bed. But in the end, I find it to be a nice story, but divorced from reality. And the moral of the story is: Men, feel your feelings and love your children. Haven’t we trodden that path before?

Best bits: I liked when the family moved to South Carolina and were first exploring the old house they’d inherited.

Main complaint: The unreality of it all. Maybe I’m just old and cynical, but having the plot all wrapped up with bows is not my style.

Hidden gifts: Jack’s friend Sammy is sort of a guardian angel who makes the plot move in various directions. Without Sammy there would be no book.

Physical description: Book-sized, well put together; 333 pages, with acknowledgments and author bio.